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Book club: Houdini invented himself: his name, his act and all

Vancouver, BC: APRIL 22, 2014 -- Steven Galloway is an Associate Professor and Acting Chair in the Creative Writing Program at UBC. His most recent book is called The Confabulist, about Harry Houdini.
(Photo by Jason Payne/ PNG)
(For story by Tracy Sherlock)

Photograph by: Jason Payne
, VANCOUVER SUN

The Vancouver Sun’s book club is discussing The Confabulist by Vancouver author Steven Galloway. It’s a historical novel about the life, loves and murder of Henry Houdini. We will be chatting online with Galloway at noon on Wednesday, May 28. Plan to join the conversation at www.vancouversun.com/books.

Julia Denholm: What I like about Houdini most in this book is his humanness: he starts out as a struggling vaudevillian, dumps his brother, terrifies and repeatedly betrays his wife, is nasty, is flawed. Becomes very famous. Stays nasty. Stays flawed.

Today we are far removed from the cult of fame that permitted “celebrities” a certain mystique: now we know everything about those nasty, flawed celebrities.

But Houdini, for the most part, is remembered for his persona, despite the many books written about the man. Galloway introduces us to the man. Whether he’s a real man or an invention is the question.

Monique Sherrett: The famous and infamous are always fascinating, especially entertainers. Frank Sinatra, for example, is so lauded but also many say Ol’ Blue Eyes wasn’t a nice guy. These men at the top of their game need such an ego to perform, I’m sure that if they don’t start out nasty, as Julia says, they develop that as a coping mechanism. What I like about Galloway’s version of Houdini is that he gives us the entertainer and a version of the man behind the scenes. Both are inventions. Houdini invented himself: the name, the act, everything. And that’s the great American promise, that you can come from nothing and build your fortune. What a perfect illusion.

Speaking of invention and illusions, there’s something uncanny about Houdini. His life is a lovely dichotomy. He spent 26 years in the 19th century with horse and buggy, telegrams and struggling to make a name for himself and then 26 years in the 20th century with automobiles, telephones, radio and riches and celebrity.

The technological advances alone must have seemed like magic to people. Then for a magician as practised in slight of hand and flexibility as Houdini to use that technology in his act, it must have been a double whammy for the audience.

Ian Weir: In one very real sense, Galloway’s Houdini is the 20th century’s first superhero. He’s Batman before comic books existed, and I love the way the novel plays on that archetype. Like all great superheroes, he’s the projection of our adolescent yearnings — which is, I think, a big part of the reason that we stay so invested in the character, despite (as Julia notes) his pretty major moral transgressions.

This resonates on another level with the wonderful Robert-Houdin quote that Martin Strauss cites early in the novel: “A magician is an actor playing a magician.” There’s something in this that goes right to the very heart of post-modern bewilderment — our desperate sense that we need to inhabit a self-created persona to exist in the first place.

Melanie Jackson: I enjoyed how Houdini reveals the practical how-to’s to supposed magic tricks. There’s a scene set in 1918 where he instructs some American soldiers and sailors on how to escape a sinking ship. “People drown … because they lose their sense of direction. If you become disoriented you’re done for. Watch the air bubbles. They’re your best clue to which way is up.” He also tells them how to escape being bound tightly with ropes. In other words, nothing is impossible if you just think it through. It’s a reassuring perspective.

Houdini is the anti-fabulist. He reminds me of Sherlock Holmes, who similarly explains seemingly unsolvable mysteries. No wonder Houdini gets so upset with Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for believing in ectoplasm (yech!), etc. Doyle is betraying his own protagonist with such nonsense. Houdini as superhero? He’s Holmesian, so yes, I agree.

Daphne Wood: A superhero indeed — with all the mystery and dark secrets that go along with it! The title of the novel was intriguing to me — when I learned “confabulation” is basically an innocent account based on false memories, without malice or deliberate attempts to deceive, I was even more intrigued. Could I really depend on the perspective of the narrator — or did his illness already progress to the point that true memories were replaced with fabrications? Critical scenes where the two main characters intersect were described by the unreliable witness, Martin Strauss, and leave so much in question. Is the reader being tricked? Or are we receiving an explanation for the illusion? These mysteries kept my attention focused on Houdini, watching to see if there were any subtle ‘reveals’ about his true nature or whether he would continue to show only what the audience (or reader) wanted to believe. A fascinating literary technique to depict the world’s greatest illusionist.

Vancouver, BC: APRIL 22, 2014 -- Steven Galloway is an Associate Professor and Acting Chair in the Creative Writing Program at UBC. His most recent book is called The Confabulist, about Harry Houdini.
(Photo by Jason Payne/ PNG)
(For story by Tracy Sherlock)